ON HAVING A PLAIN OLD FRIEND

By all means, you must find at least one loving, honest friend to ground you, which might even be the utterly accepting gaze of the Friend.

It's amazing and oh-so gratifying to realize how my experience with friends and my acceptance of them has changed over the years. I suspect the change is God's way of leading me to love my enemy as well as my neighbor not to mention myself.

A couple examples:

• I let old JoB be an angel in disguise, and I feel no itch-to-bitch about her or his ways.  
• I am thanking God daily for keeping my heart and my mind open toward a friend who is not doing it right...my open mind is that I am asking to realize that s/he is right already.

Having realized that, it is still vital to me to have a loving, honest friend to talk to. 

Who's kidding whom? God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are the best, but running my mouth about Gertrude takes an in-the-flesh friend if I'm going to feel understood. And isn't that kinda what comfortable feels like?

Thank you.

EMBRACE THE NOW TO FEEL EMBRACED

Embrace the present moment as an ever-flowing source of holiness. —Jean Pierre de Caussade

This instruction...or advice...is my sliver of gold for it was the seed-thought of this quote that set me free in the midst of my darkest panicked thoughts so long ago.

[I need to clarify to keep from giving myself airs, I never heard of Jean Pierre de Caussade at the time or indeed until I read the quote in one of Fr Richard Rohr's Meditations fairly recently. It is that I realized back then the whole of the present moment he referred to.]

The seed-thought that is golden to me, i.e., the present moment that we must embrace, is the one here and now...the one that comes slithering through our mind, smelling like vomit, screaming vile curses that we fear are truths...the unleashing of dark moral forces as Teilhard put it.

Those are the moments we must needs embrace as an ever-flowing source of holiness...along with the happy, joyous and free moments that grow with gratitude.

To paraphrase my beloved "God Calling," we must praise the grey days or they'll keep coming back until we do. That's more my speed, actually...there's no way my ego Lucy can spin that to mean anything but what it says.

Remember, too, Eckhart Tolle's Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. That helps take away the dread of the dark.

According to me, we get to welcome the present moment no matter how we are perceiving it...with jitters or with joy. A thank you will suffice.

Thank you. 

LOVE OUR JUDGE...WALK FREE IN OUR MIND

 In order not to judge, I need to believe in the I of all of us, not just me. - my note to me from some twenty years ago

As I read that this morning, I thought of the intervening years from first flash to now, and I felt relief?or safe? or secure? content at any rate. Content that I have been consciously and unconsciously building on that realization all along.

God has gifted me with two mini-me's. Judge? Lord, how they judge. And it's me they judge! Out of love, don'cha know, as my grandma used to say. Yet I know they love me, and I know I love them. That's how I know they are gifts from God...because I feel judged, and I love them anyway.

Ah, finally. Finally! I'm not only knowing, I'm showing: We must go beyond reason to love...I knew that was true first time I read it some thirty years ago (in The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment). That I can feel judged and loved and love the judgers all at the same time does not make good common sense. Whoa and hallelujah! From my toenails up, I know that not making good common sense part to be the good news.

I can realize it as my doubting mind's proof that reason does not prove love...going beyond reason is going to God and the spirit of God, spiritual reality. When we know love going out and coming in, we know love all around, and we are Oned.

Thank you.

YEAH, IT'S HARD, BUT IT'S GOLD

I asked my God to help me let go of my inner pretenses...those pretenses that, unknowingly, I show-and-tell as me.

And I felt: My life is being stripped bare of all pretenses within and without even as I breathe...I can quit looking for a halo, it is the feeling of a splinter in my Soul that is my reward. 

I meditate on that, and I accept that all the apparent losses in my life this past year are for my benefit. From some, I have already realized the good; some, I am open to. None do I resist...and there's my blessing for sure.

It is when I try to make my good happen that I fall in with my ego Lucy's seductive thinking...where  my ego goal is to come out with the halo for being willing to show my stuff-and-such. Thus earning no spiritual growth, leaving me wondering why God is such a nun. 

Sit and wait on the Lord may be the hardest of all spiritual commands for me. I suspect that is because, in truth, I'd rather sit and wait than take the risk of moving on out...but that is the reasoning mind at its least useful. There is usually an underneath meaning in spiritual commands, and my take on this one is: Sit and wait with my thoughts entirely focused on the Lord and the things of the Lord, not on the problem that I'm wrestling with.

Turning our eyes away from our perceived problem to most anything is the first step and obviously hard...if we weren't obsessing with a problem we wouldn't be needing to turn from it.

The second step is focusing our thoughts. Speaking of hard, trying...even when we want...to focus and stay focused on lilies of the valley when Gertrude needs the back of the hand qualifies.What's that old spiritual? Hard ain't it hard, trying to love the Lord? Or something like that. It is for me for sure.

But the reward! Actually, it's the reward that isn't a reward. It's the splinter in our Soul that turns into our sliver of gold that brings peace to our heart and Soul. Ah, and we know it.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

IN THE FACE OF FEAR, LAUGH ANYWAY.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.  – Charles Dickens

And ain't that the truth! But it requires thinking on...or it does for me. Mainly because my initial thought about "an excess of comfort" equals having money. Specifically, more than enough money...like a billion or two. (And, really, wasn't it just yesterday, or the day before at most, that the thought would have been "a million or two?" A whole 'nother story.)

As I note often and often and often, I'm going through a period with my thoughts at 6s & 7s. I assure me it is this long, cold, dreary winter...the political scene...the country's financial brinkmanship. But I know. I know all of those are facts but they are not the reason for my "pimpled, ill-conditioned state" of mind.

The ego-reason I'm feeling fearful is the diagnosis of cognitive decline that both my little guy Ruckus and my mentor have been gifted with. Which opens the door to the unvarnished reason: I'm fighting that short and sharp jab of fear of being left all alone.

It's also known as loneliness.

Now, I love God, and Jesus is a sweetheart of a guy, but I can't snuggle and play kissy-face with either like I can with Ruckus, and I can't pick their brain in that instant when I'm pea-green-purple petrified of making a Big Mistake, like I can with my mentor. Then laugh at myself over it. Laughing at myself all alone lacks that glorious shared feeling of fun, fun in the face of any evidence to the contrary, that I am OK...and loved.

I know, I know...this, too, shall pass.

Please and thank you.

THERE'S "WINNING" AND THERE'S PEACE

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. . . . You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  - Marianne Williamson (lifted from Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today)

There are many seekers of still more spiritual growth, upon reading that Williamson's quote, who get stuck in our reasoning mind right there. Spiritual growth flies out the window and ego shouts, "Hallelujah!" It gives false hope that we can...indeed, must...speak up, speak out...and the louder, the better. Ah, but it is our ego-victory truth that we want to shout.

Ego-victory truth: Getting someone told off, setting him straight, one-upping her by any means, i.e. truth or bald-faced lies, makes no never mind. It's a hard lesson a-learning when it turns out we only feel good when we're rehearsing that in our mind.

If we are honestly seeking still more spiritual growth, we will find after we have lashed out, that we invariably feel the rues, regrets and remorses...and we know from our toenails up that we must apologize and make amends.

That is the nature of still more spiritual growth...it does not allow for ego-victory one-up-manship. And that, if nothing else, proves the lasting power of the Sermon which is all about give over, give up, give in. And "win."

Whoa!...here comes an even more valuable truth: Both sides must come out the winner for God to be in it...and we cannot bring that about all on our own. We go to God for God no matter our I-want goal.  Then we know peace...that is to win.

Thank you.

BEFORE GOD THERE IS ONLY LOVE

I have come to believe, or suspect at any rate, that letting go of our reliance on our reasoning mind, or  common sense, is the major (only?) barrier to our relying on our own spiritual intuition. Necessarily so to begin with. It takes time, dedication, time, discipline and time to hone our intuition enough to trust it...and then we learn to check our self out with our mentor before we fly with it.

That occurred to me this morning when I read Rohr and he referred to Lady Julian of Norwich's
Before God, our wounds are our glory.

I thought upon reading that how it explains God's view as the mirror-opposite of our own. According to me, ego always legislates for self; God does not legislate. It is All...One...Love.

To our ego, our wounds are not fair, not our fault, and must be defended, i.e., somebody else must pay. Spiritually, our wounds are evidence of our search for God and acceptance washes them clean.

I have heard Jung quoted as saying that alcoholism is nothing more nor less than a search for the spiritual. The reasoning mind finds that a tish difficult to grasp, but the Lady's quote tells it, Before God, our wounds are our glory.

Thank you.